340 



ranges of the north ; not a single fragment of the exten- 

 sive lime and sandstone formations of the Helderberg 

 mountains, twelve miles to the south, has ever yet been 

 detected among them. The sands are almost completely 

 composed of rounded particles of transparent quartz, 

 gneiss, hypersthene, hornblende, and augite, disseminated 

 in about equal proportions; the latter named minerals 

 giving to the entire mass that greenish-brown color that it 

 invariably presents whenever it becomes exposed to the 

 sight, and which readily distinguishes it from the over^ 

 lying ferruginous sands. Their mineral characters and 

 abraded angles also denote their transportation by water 

 from some far distant region. It is rarely indeed that any 

 other mineral ingredients can be discovered among their 

 particles, if we except some occasional fragments of flesh- 

 colored feldspar and oxides of iron. 



Whenever any of these imbedded materials are freely 

 exposed to view by the numerous diggings, and in the ra- 

 vines along the shores of the various streams that dis- 

 charge their waters into those of the Hudson and Mohawk 

 rivers, they invariably present an arrangement of large 

 and small particles in a series of waved lines or angular 

 markings, as if disturbed or deposited from gently moving 

 or by violently agitated waters. This in all probability 

 was the case when the drainage took place, and the plain 

 became permanently dry. These peculiar characters most 

 strikingly resemble in appearance those of a no doubt si- 

 milar nature, which are most generally to be met with on 

 the exposed edges of many of the more ancient sandstones : 

 a fact strongly impressing on our minds the conviction 

 that nature is governed at the present day by the same 

 laws by which she operated in times far remote. 



In many places it would appear, that after this brown 

 arenaceous matter had been permanently arranged through 

 the clay in the manner we now behold it, slight and lim- 

 ited depositions of an exceedingly fine-grained, light yel- 



